Like for so many other people, playing Planescape: Torment was for me a uniquely memorable experience, one of the few games I have ever played whose story I can still recall with startling clarity and emotion. Naturally when they announced this game as a spiritual successor, I was intrigued but also skeptical. I felt that I had to play this eventually out of loyalty to the original game and having done so, I’m left with mixed feelings. This does feel a lot like the game that inspired it, perhaps too much so because it seems to be trying too hard, yet at the end of the day it still feels inferior in almost every way.
It’s embarrassing how late I am in playing games and in this case, it’s not even because I waited for it to go to discount. I was actually a Kickstarter backer on this one but kept putting off actually playing it, at first due to the many complaints and later balance changes, and later just because I had other games to get to first. It just goes to show that there really is no point to me buying new games at full price.
This is of course the 2013 reboot of the franchise that was distributed for free not too long ago. I rarely bother to claim all those free games nowadays as I know I won’t have the time to play them. But I had never actually played a single game in this series before so I thought why not. Plus something straightforward and relatively easy to play after how intense and demanding Il-2 Sturmovik is. I’m actually still playing that a little every day as I slowly work through the Stalingrad and getting a little better every time.
Since I now have a joystick, even if it is the super cheap Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, I thought I ought to try a proper flight simulator game at least once. This is an old but still reasonably well respected game and it’s available on Steam. I also thought that flying World War II-era planes would be simpler, without all of the complicated electronics, and it has a career mode which looks like it could be fun.
I’m always open to new and interesting videogaming experiences and I’ve heard good things about this cyberpunk horror game by a Polish developer. They even managed to get Rutger Hauer to star as the protagonist and all but shouts out its Blade Runner influences. Unfortunately while its production values are indeed top notch, it is a very linear game and I’ve come to find that scary scenes have limited effect on me once I realize that whatever I see have no impact in terms of gameplay mechanics.
I picked this up in the interests of trying out more title in the genre of Chinese RPGs. This one is apparently a classic of the genre, being a modern remake of an older and very famous game. As I understand it, the original game held an official license for using the intellectual property of Jin Yong. This sequel doesn’t possess the license any longer and so does away with the more direct references. But it is still crammed with pretty much every kung fu that ever appeared in every one of his novels, plus much else including that of Gu Long. Basically any famous martial art, clan, trope or item you can think of in wuxia, you will be able to find it here.
As usual I’m a few years behind the curve playing this extremely popular and meme-worthy game late. But that’s just fine for me and this truly is one of the genre-changing games that all gamers must get around to trying eventually. The main campaign, such as it is, takes less than three hours to complete. After that there are various challenges, secrets to find, and an Endless mode if you’re up for that kind of thing, which I’m usually not.
